American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists

Provenance:

CIGNA Museum and Art Collection, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by 1982.

Sotheby's, New York, Sale of December 1, 2004, Lot 214.

Acquired directly from the above sale.

Exhibited:

Washington, DC, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, "16th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings," May 26, 1939, no. 33 (as Shad Fishermen, No. 2).

Newport, The Art Association of Newport, "28th Annual Exhibition," 1939.

New York, Ferargil Gallery, "Paintings by John Folinsbee," October 16 – 30, 1939.

Ferargil Gallery, New York, "Paintings by John Folinsbee," December 1940.

Harrisburg, Art Association Harrisburg, "John Folinsbee and Charles Rudy," February 4 – 24, 1968.

Pipersville, Richard Stuart Gallery, "John Folinsbee: His Changing Landscape and Industrial Modernism," 1981.

Trenton, New Jersey State Museum, The Paintings of John Folinsbee, October 30, 1982 – January 9, 1983, no. 31.

Doylestown, Michener Art Museum, "A Retrospective," March 25 – June 18, 1995, no. 3.

Philadelphia, Woodmere Art Museum, "John Folinsbee and American Modernism," November 6, 2010 – March 6, 2011.

Literature:

A. M. F., "Brilliant Atmosphere by Folinsbee; Hubert Davis," Art News 38 (October 28, 1939).

Peter G. Cook, John Folinsbee, New York, 1994, p. 95, illustrated.

Brian H. Peterson, Pennsylvania Impressionism, Philadelphia, 2002, p. 125, illustrated.

Kirsten M. Jensen, John Folinsbee and American Modernism, Philadelphia, 2010, exhibition catalogue, illustrated p. 25, p. 267.

Edward Sozanski, "Shifting Landscapes of a New Hope Artist." Philadelphia Inquirer, December 12, 2010, p. h6, illustrated.

Edward Higgins, "John Folinsbee," ICON, p. 8, illustrated.

Kirsten M. Jensen, "John Folinsbee and American Modernism," American Art Review (February 2011), p. 96, illustrated.

Kirsten M. Jensen, Folinsbee Considered, New York, 2013, illustrated p. 110, p. 267, illustrated.

Accessible on the John Folinsbee online Catalogue Raisonné at https://www.johnfolinsbee.org, no. JFF.332.

Lot Note:

Shad Fisherman No. 2 exemplifies a key moment in John Fulton Folinsbee’s transition from Impressionism toward a bolder, more uninhibited strain of Modernism. While firmly rooted in the observed reality of riverside labor in his beloved Pennsylvania, the painting transcends pure representation to achieve what Folinsbee increasingly sought in his mature work: a synthesis of modernist execution with Impressionist sensitivity conveyed through atmosphere, color, and the interplay of light. Indeed, and as Kirsten Jensen aptly observes, “the real subjects of Shad Fisherman No. 2 are light—the stark contrasts between the looming clouds and the summer sky—and the moody anticipation of the storm to come."

The fishermen, quickly sketched in a strokes, were among Folinsbee's favorite subjects. Although they add a bit of human activity, here they merely serve as a means to cast the various effects of the light, some blinding white while others blend with the blue-shadowed casting net, thus heightening the drama of the coming storm. Here, Folinsbee departs from the more linear construction of his earlier industrial landscapes, which marked his first attempts at Modernism, and instead orchestrates a swirling vortex of movement, using sweeping brushwork and intensified tonal contrasts to accentuate the dramatic effect of the moment, thus underscoring the emotional power of what appears to be, at first glance, a very mundane activity.

Shad Fisherman No. 2 is emblematic of Folinsbee’s finest works from the late 1930s in that it embodies the artist’s deepening engagement with Modernist ideas, particularly the atmospheric mysticism championed by Arthur Bowen Davies, whom Folinsbee deeply admired (alongside Robert Henri), and whose landscapes Duncan Phillips praised for their affinities with Cézanne and El Greco. The darkened palette, heightened shadow-play, and compressed composition in the present work all reflect this influence, transforming the scene of shad fishing into an eternal, almost mythical American life tableau, which would led contemporary art critic Edward Alden Jewell to hail Folinsbee as “one of the lords of impasto, who can swing his brush with an authority that is boisterous but that seldom falls short of capturing the effect desired.”